


His Unspeakable Mercies

by betts



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Blow Jobs, Bottom Bucky, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hipsters, Humor, M/M, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Semi-Public Sex, Tattoo Artist Steve Rogers, Tattoos, Tongue Piercings, Top Steve Rogers, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:13:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4031401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha gestures to his shoulder. “The scars. The stump. Put some art on it.”<br/>“Oh, sure. Great idea. Point me to the magic markers and we’ll make a day of it.”<br/>“Cap the sass, Barnes. I mean like a tattoo.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Unspeakable Mercies

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Robert E. Lee's [letter to his wife](http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/robert-e-lees-letter-to-his-1.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/).  
> Beta'd by my reason to wake up in the morning, [shiphitsthefan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shiphitsthefan).  
> See endnotes for trigger warnings.

Bucky’s grip slips on the bathroom cabinet door, and it slams shut with a bang. He winces at the noise, squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath.

He’s been back for almost a year, and this shit keeps happening. Every time he thinks he’s okay, the smallest fucking thing sends him into a tailspin—when the florescent lights of the grocery store flicker in just the wrong way while he’s picking up milk, like flashes of explosions in the distance; when he idly reaches for the remote with a hand that no longer exists; when he turns the shower on and hears the rapid patter of machine gun fire.

His throat clicks when he swallows, pushing down the flustered beating of his heart, hand gripping the sink to keep it from balling into a fist and smashing the mirror in front of him. Bucky twists on the tap and fills his hand with water, bends down and splashes it on his face. It feels good against his skin, serves as a constant reminder that he’s no longer in the desert, where the temperature of liquids was utterly irrelevant. Everything was lukewarm.

He looks at his reflection in the mirror, droplets of water falling down his chin and onto his bare chest. His eyes trail over to what remains of his left arm: a couple inches of humerus covered by atrophied muscle and wrinkled, burned skin. The flushed scar tissue extends over his shoulder and a small part of his chest, then tapers into smaller dashes and dots across his stomach. It’s a grotesque shadow of the blast, etched onto his flesh to remind him every day of the hell he endured.

“Why don’t you get it covered up?” Natasha asks from the doorway.

Bucky almost jumps out of his skin. “Jesus, quit sneaking up on me like that.”

Natasha leans against the doorjamb, arms crossed over her chest. She’s wearing her workout clothes, a tank-top and yoga pants, red hair pulled up in a messy bun, probably waiting for him to get out of the bathroom so she can take a shower.

“I will when you quit being so skittish,” she says.

He grits his teeth to get a check on his irritation. Natasha’s been putting him up in her guest bedroom since he returned, and hasn’t asked for a penny of rent. As much as she seems like a callous hard-ass, they’re kind of best friends.

“Excuse me if I’m a little jumpy after having half my body blasted apart,” Bucky replies.

She ignores him and reiterates, “So why don’t you get it covered up if it’s bothering you so much?”

 _Creepy ninja-psychic roommate,_ he thinks, but says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Natasha gestures to his shoulder. “The scars. The stump. Put some art on it.”

“Oh, sure. Great idea. Point me to the magic markers and we’ll make a day of it.”

“Cap the sass, Barnes. I mean like a tattoo.”

He pauses and stares at her, mind grinding to a halt. He hadn’t considered it.

“What do you even know about tattoos?” he asks. His heart has finally slowed back down to its normal beating, even though he kind of wishes it would just stop entirely. The only person who gives a shit about whether he’s dead or alive is Natasha, and more than a friend, he’s a burden.

She shrugs and replies, “Well, I mean, I have one. And I have tattoo artist friends. So I know more than you do.”

“You have a tattoo? Since when?”

“Since maybe a year after you left.” She shifts to the side and pulls her compression tank up. Across her ribs, wrapping from her stomach to her back, from her hip to the bottom of her breast is the silhouette of a ballerina. The ballerina’s body is filled with light gray shading and dashes of pink; there are no lines, just soft strokes like a paintbrush. The figure stands in first position, arms overhead in a circle, but in each of her hands is a gun, the barrels crossing to make an X.

“Wow,” Bucky replies. “That’s…beautiful.”

She puts her shirt back down and says, “I can make you an appointment with my artist if you want.”

Bucky leans against the sink and shakes his head. “Thanks, but I’m not sure he’s going to be able to do anything for me.”

Natasha’s lips twitch, like she’s hiding a smile. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be able to do something for you,” she replies, and pulls her phone out of its spot tucked in her sports bra. She clicks a few buttons and hands it to him.

He takes it and looks at the picture of a person’s chest, adorned with red, blue, and purple roses. A hammer spans across the right set of ribs while a yellow lightning bolt spans the left. Long brown hair falls over slight shoulders and pale skin. “Who’s this?”

“My friend Jane. She got it done by her boyfriend Thor after her double mastectomy.”

“What the hell kind of a name is Thor?” Bucky asks, setting the phone down on the sink so he can use two fingers to zoom in before he picks it back up.

“A tattoo artist’s.”

“Is Thor your guy?” The art looks different than Natasha’s. The colors and lines are clean and bold, nothing like the abstract simplicity of the ballerina.

“No, but he works at the same place. Shield & Hammer over by the farmer’s market. There’s also Sam who does good gray scale and Tony who does piercings.”

They stand in silence while Bucky continues staring at the picture. His gut wrenches at the familiarity of losing a piece of oneself, but his heart lifts minutely at the notion of using the absence as a canvas for something beautiful.

He hands the phone back to Natasha and says, “I’ll think about it.”

“Sure, just let me know when you’re ready,” she replies with a cocky smile. “Now will you please get out of my bathroom?”

#

Hours later, they’re watching TV on the couch, Natasha’s feet pressed up against Bucky’s thigh. When the show breaks to commercial, Bucky says, “But I’m not artistic.”

Without looking over, Natasha replies, “Good thing you don’t have to draw your own tattoo.”

#

The next day, Bucky leans against the kitchen counter while Natasha stirs a pot of pasta.

“I don’t have any money,” Bucky says.

“Consider it a birthday gift,” Natasha replies.

“You don’t do birthday gifts.”

She takes a noodle out of the pot with a slotted spoon and holds it up to him. “Sure I do. Tell me if they’re done.”

Bucky slurps the noodle into his mouth and says around it, “Since when? They need another minute.”

Natasha continues stirring the noodles and replies, “I don’t do them annually is all. Think of it as a gift for every birthday I’ve missed and every birthday going forward.”

#

They’re at the dining room table eating pasta bolognese and drinking red wine in peaceful silence. Bucky’s really more of an in-front-of-the-TV eater, but Natasha insists that when she cooks, they appreciate their meal by sitting down together and eating it.

It’s comforting, but he’d never admit that.

“I don’t even know what I’d get done,” Bucky says.

“So get a vague idea and trust Steve to do the rest. He’s an intuitive guy,” Natasha replies.

“That seems…risky.”

She sets her fork down and levels a glare at him. “Look, a lot of people have this misconception about tattoos, that the person getting the tattoo has to have all the control, but you don’t. Tattoos are a game of cooperation; teamwork, sort of. It’s your body, but it’s their art.”

Natasha rarely says that many words in a row, so Bucky takes a hint that this is something she’s determined for him to do, something she’s concerned about on his behalf. He doesn’t get why. He’s fine.

“And you really trust this guy?” he asks, looking down and moving the pasta around with his fork.

With deadly seriousness, she replies, “Yeah, I do.”

Bucky takes the weight of her declaration for what it really means, and continues thinking while he eats.

#

The next morning, Bucky slides into the seat across from Natasha at the dining room table. She doesn’t bother looking up when he sits down, because coffee time is a sacred hour in which one may only speak to Natasha on pain of death. She scrolls through the newsfeed on her iPad and sips at her coffee, ignoring Bucky staring at her impatiently.

As soon as she takes the last gulp of her drink and sets her mug down, Bucky blurts out, “But what if it hurts?”

She tilts her head in a gesture of exasperation, then leans forward and puts her hand on top of his. “James, I don’t want this to sound insensitive, but you got blown up. I think you can handle a tattoo gun.”

He takes a deep breath. “Yeah, you’re right.”

She lets go of his hand and stands, grabs her keys from the counter and says, “Let’s go.”

“Where?” Bucky stands too, an automatic reflex of having orders barked at him for years on end, one that he really needs to get a check on before he follows someone to his own death.

“Shield & Hammer. Your appointment is in fifteen minutes.”

#

Bucky takes off his helmet and and runs a hand through his shaggy hair, staring at an ancient, red-brick house in a part of town he’s never been in. Up until he enlisted, he never went anywhere he didn’t already inherently know. The Brooklyn city streets were like the veins in his body, its people, his blood. He tried to go home once he made it out of the hospital, find an apartment and get back to where his life was before he deployed, but he quickly found that home wasn’t really home anymore. Mattresses were too soft, blankets too warm, city sounds too loud. Everything was sharp edges and wrongness.

Then Natasha found him, because his burner phone ran out of minutes and she couldn’t get ahold of him. She broke into his apartment while he was curled up fully clothed in his bathtub, and she dragged him into the New York suburbs. He doesn’t remember much of those first few weeks living with her, but he knows she got him out of his sublet, packed up his meager belongings for him, and made sure all his medical shit was sorted with the VA.

If his life was worth anything, he’d owe it to her.

He looks around as he slides off Natasha’s motorcycle. The area is a bit run-down; there are boarded-up storefronts with faded For Sale signs in the windows, lawns with grass at knee-height. But underneath the dilapidation, there are signs of life. One building across the street has a colorful mural painted on the side. There are a couple small shops and cafes, a book store. Some kids are drawing on the sidewalk down the adjacent road. The farmer’s market across the street is bustling with activity, acoustic music drifting toward them from a live show being played on a small stage.

The building in front of them, however…

“This place looks more like a haunted house than a tattoo shop,” Bucky says.

Natasha takes off her helmet and slides off her bike. “Why can’t it be both?”

They approach the building, and Bucky can finally see the giant sign over the front door that indicates this place is, in fact, a commercial property. It reads in stylish block lettering, _Shield & Hammer. _The logo is simple but creative, and the ampersand in the middle creates a shield in the top loop with a hammer spanning down the bottom.

Natasha opens the door to the sound of a bell jingling. They walk inside, and the waiting area looks like someone’s living room but for the inset wall that blocks off a small office space. Art covers most of the bare brick, and three black leather couches circle around a large maple coffee table covered in art albums. In the office area beside them, a man sits behind a desk with his feet propped up on it, twirling a drumstick in one hand while he watches a laptop beside his feet, large headphones covering his ears. From what Bucky can see, his forearms are covered with faded ink.

Natasha walks over to him and nudges his shoulder. “Hey, Clint.”

He looks up at her and pulls off his headphones so that they’re looped around his neck. Bucky can see a clear plastic hearing aid clipped into his ear.

“Oh, hey, Natasha,” Clint says, letting his heavy boots thunk down against the hardwood floor. He looks Bucky up and down, and adds, “So this must be the fresh meat you brought us.”

A black door—labeled with white stenciled spray paint reading _IRON MAN—_ opens swiftly, and a man with a goatee pops his head out. The bass thrum of classic rock blares out of the room.

“Did someone say fresh meat?” he asks. His earlobes are stretched wide around a set of plugs, his right eyebrow has two rings in it, and a stud juts through his bottom lip. His eyes dart around Bucky’s face without making eye contact, inspecting him in the way the way mechanics look at car engines.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, “but I think I’ve had enough steel penetrate my body for a lifetime, thanks.”

“Damn,” Tony replies, and shuts the door again.

Clint smiles up at them from his chair. “Steve ran out for a sec, but you guys are welcome to go up and have a seat. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“Thanks,” she says, smile lingering for a split-second longer than Natasha usually regards people.

Natasha leads the way, and Clint salutes Bucky as he follows. They make their way out of the room and through the labyrinth of hallways, up a flight of stairs and around so many corners that Bucky would probably get lost if he tried to make his way out again. The house didn’t look nearly this big from the outside.

“Fucking TARDIS tattoo shop,” Bucky mumbles.

Natasha stops to reply, but they’re interrupted by a booming voice that shouts, “Natasha Romanoff!”

An enormous man darts out of the room and lifts Natasha into a hug. His entire body is covered in black tribal tattoos, from his fingertips up to his chin. His blond hair is hidden underneath a black beanie and his biceps stretch the fabric of his plaid shirt.

“Hey, Thor,” she says, voice strained as he continues squeezing her in his death grip.

“Have you come to decorate your flesh with art?” he asks her with a dopey grin as he sets her down, like it’s a completely normal thing to say to someone.

“Not me,” she replies, and gestures to Bucky. “But my friend here might get some work done by Steve.”

Thor’s gaze sweeps over to Bucky, down to his lack of arm, and his smile fades. He holds out his hand to Bucky, and Bucky takes it.

Thor grasps it in both of his meaty palms, and solemnly says, “Thank you, soldier, for your great sacrifice to this nation. I would be honored if you will allow me to gift you an alcoholic beverage of your choosing so that I may express my gratitude of your service.”

Bucky’s kind of speechless, but he manages to reply, “Sure, yeah. That sounds…good.”

Thor’s grin returns and he claps Bucky on the shoulder. “Excellent. I shall message Natasha to collaborate an adequate meeting time.”

Natasha glances up at the ceiling, and Thor says, “Ah, yes. Here, allow me to assist.” He reaches up and pulls on a handle. A platform creaks downward, and Thor unfolds a wooden set of steps from it. “Steve Rogers should be returning shortly. In the meantime, please make yourselves at home.”

“Thanks, Thor,” Natasha says, and climbs up the staircase.

Bucky follows, shooting Thor another bewildered smile before making his way up.

He isn’t sure what he was expecting climbing into the attic of a tattoo shop, but a well-lit studio space wasn’t it. Skylights make the room brighter than the rest of the building, and pages of comic books plaster every inch of the walls and vaulted ceiling. In the center of the room sits a teal blue cushioned table that looks enough like an operating table that it makes Bucky uneasy. On the far wall of the room hangs a massive circular shield with two stripes of red around the edges, a blue circle in the middle, and a white five-pointed star at the very center. On the opposite wall dangles a series of flags, starting with the American flag, followed by a rainbow flag, and then one that’s pink, blue, and purple.

A cozy-looking vintage couch covered in yellow and orange flowers sits underneath the shield, and Natasha plops down on it.

Bucky sits next to her and notices other oddities of the room: a pink porcelain sink and mirror, a dented up green metal desk with a stool underneath it and tattoo guns neatly lined on top, a bulletin board with penciled sketches and business cards tacked to it.

“This place is overwhelming,” Bucky mutters, swiping a sweaty palm down his thigh.

“So is the guy who works in here,” Natasha replies absently, scrolling through her phone.

“That makes me feel a lot better.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll love him.” Her lips twitch again, a knowing smile that Bucky can’t stand, because it means that Natasha is scheming. The last time Natasha schemed against him, it involved a surprise birthday that ended in Atlantic City, where Bucky woke up naked on someone’s pool table with no idea how he got there.

Before he can grill her about it, they’re interrupted by the sound of footsteps echoing up the attic staircase.

“Sorry I’m late. Needed to help break down the farmer’s market for the day.”

Bucky bites his cheek to keep  his jaw from dropping to the floor as the man ascends the stairs, head suddenly filled with the internal screaming that one endures upon seeing the most attractive man who ever lived standing mere feet away.

Natasha stands up and lifts her arms. “Hey, Steve.”

Steve sets down what looks to be a strawberry milkshake—Bucky’s really gotta check out that farmer’s market—and pulls Natasha in for a hug. Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever seen Natasha hug anyone except for him, and now she’s been hugged by two people in the span of an hour. And she seems to be _enjoying it._

She lets go and gestures to Bucky. “This is my friend, James.”

Bucky stands, somehow, and holds his hand out to Steve to take. “I prefer Bucky, actually.” He levels a sidelong stare at Natasha who smiles at him sweetly, even though the look she’s giving him encompasses every argument they’ve ever had that ‘Bucky’ is a kid’s name and he’s an adult now. But Bucky likes his name, so Natasha can shut it.

Steve takes Bucky’s hand in his own and meets his eyes, and Bucky thinks that he might be physically melting from the sheer hotness of him. Steve’s blond hair is neatly combed and parted to the side like he walked right out of the forties. He’s wearing a blue v-neck t-shirt that matches his eyes, and— _sweet Jesus_ —a pair of nicely pressed khakis. Unlike the rest of the shop’s employees, Steve is pointedly less decorated; the only tattoos that Bucky can see span down the entire length of his left arm and peek out from the top of the collar of his shirt. They’re colored in much the way the room is: vivid blues and yellows and reds, bold lines and dots. It looks like it’s comprised of comic book characters Bucky doesn’t immediately recognize. He’s like a big splotch of color in an otherwise drab world.

A big splotch of color with a sculpted physique and a crooked, shy smile.

God help Bucky.

The best part, or maybe it’s the worst part, is the way that Steve looks at him. Most people either ignore the lack of arm to the point that Bucky can tell that they’re trying not to look, or they go ahead and stare, like Bucky’s some kind of freak.

But Steve shakes his hand and meets his eyes like he’s already acknowledged Bucky is missing an arm, accepted it, and moved on.

“Bucky it is,” Steve says. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Bucky lets go of his hand and full-on glares at Natasha. “Oh, you have?”

Natasha holds her hands up in defense, “I needed to keep him in the loop.”

Bucky looks back at Steve and smiles, tight-lipped. “Will you excuse us for a moment?” He drags Natasha by the elbow into a small closet on the other side of the room and shuts the door.

“Why didn’t you tell me your tattoo artist is a goddamn Adonis?” Bucky hisses.

She furrows her brow in such a sarcastic way that Bucky wants to smooth the little wrinkle in her forehead with his thumb. “Is he? I hadn’t noticed.”

Bucky runs a hand down his face and then gestures at his body. “How could you do this? I mean look at me.” His jeans have holes in the knees, and his gray t-shirt is threadbare.

She looks him up and down. “What? I thought you were going for a kind of…dumpster chic look.”

He lets out a deep breath through his nose. “I hate you.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes. “I know.”

With a frustrated grunt, Bucky pulls open the door again.

“Everything okay?” Steve asks from the swivel stool, leaning against the desk and sipping at his shake.

“He’s just getting cold feet,” Natasha says, condescending, and thumps him on the back.

“Happens to everybody,” Steve replies. He turns around and sets a hand on the table, adding, “Come have a seat so we can get started.”

Bucky hops up on the table, still glaring daggers at Natasha.

“Shirt off, if that’s okay,” Steve tells him, sliding over to a table and grabbing a pair of purple gloves from a box.

“I should leave you boys to it,” Natasha says, backing toward the stairs. “I’ll be up front with Clint if you need me. Be gentle with him, Steve. He’s squishy.”

Steve snorts a laugh. “Doesn’t look it, but I’ll try.”

As Natasha makes her way down the steps, Bucky grips the back of his collar and pulls his shirt off. He ignores the rapid pounding of his heart and the nervous itch under his skin. At this point, cold feet don’t even matter. If he leaves here without some ink, Natasha’s never going to let him hear the end of it.

Steve pulls on the gloves. “Normally we’d talk about what you want first and I’d have you sign some paperwork, but given your…situation, I need to make sure I can work around your injuries. Is it alright if I touch you?”

Bucky nods, and Steve starts at Bucky’s shoulder, trails warm fingers down to where the flesh stops. He lifts what’s left of Bucky’s arm and sets it back down, runs his fingers up to where the worst of the scarring is. He follows the line of jagged, wrinkled red markings down Bucky’s chest and stomach, then wheels himself to the other side of the table and runs his hands back up the scars on the other side. Bucky’s breath is shallow in his chest as Steve works. He’s hasn’t been touched like this since before the explosion; gentle and inquisitive, the exact opposite of the way doctors poked and prodded him like he was some kind of experiment.

“Do you want all of it covered up?” Steve asks, voice pitched low. It’s calming like a doctor’s, but not belittling, and not the way he talked to Natasha, either. It’s intimate, in a strange way that settles over Bucky and helps to calm his nerves.

For the first time, Bucky admits, “Yes.” After he says it, he knows it’s true, and a weight lifts from his shoulders.

“Any ideas of what you want? Natasha said you weren’t sure.”

Bucky can feel Steve’s fingers continue to inspect the skin of his lower back. “The only specific request I have is…” He trails off. It’s easier to talk about with Steve behind him, but he still has to close his eyes. Quieter, he concludes, “…a star. On my shoulder maybe. Dark red.”

“May I ask why?” When Bucky hesitates, Steve adds, “It gives me a better idea of what you’re looking for, if I can understand the reason behind it.”

“It was the symbol of my infantry. I think it would be good to, you know, honor them.”

Steve’s hand stills for a moment before brushing his entire hand against the small of Bucky’s back, not in a gesture of exploration, but understanding.

“Anything else?” Steve asks. His touch draws away, and he wheels around to the desk, where he picks up a clipboard and hands it to Bucky.

Bucky pulls the pen out of the clip and begins scanning the pages, surprisingly relaxed now that he’s made his decision. “No tribal, or, uh, what’s it called…bio-mech. I’m not a machine. No flowers, either. I mean, they’re pretty, but I’m not really a flowers kinda guy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Steve replies. The way he says it makes Bucky’s eyes shoot up from the clipboard. Steve has a small smile on his face, leaning back against the desk.

Bucky hides the heat rising to his cheeks by looking back down at the stack of paperwork and reading through it. He sets the clipboard beside him and signs his name on all the signature lines. The angle is awkward, and he never realized before how good penmanship usually involves two hands.

When he’s done, he hands it back to Steve, who takes it and scans through it for correctness before saying, decidedly more professional than a moment ago, “We have a lot of work to do, but I have you penciled in for four hours. I can try to get all of it done in one sitting, but I recommend two sittings since we’re going over such sensitive areas. Your call.”

“What’s the difference?” Bucky asks.

“One sitting’s gonna hurt a lot more,” Steve replies.

Bucky huffs a laugh and glances at his arm. “I think I can handle it.”

Steve smiles at him again. It’s as comforting as it is unfairly sexy. “Alright, so here’s the game plan: I’m going to start with the star on your shoulder using a stencil, and we can talk while I’m doing that so I can get a better idea of where to go from there. I’ll freehand the rest. Sound good?”

Bucky nods, and Steve reaches forward to grasp Bucky’s bicep between his fingers. He removes his hand to measure the distance between his thumb and middle finger, then slides over to his desk, where he picks up a ruler and sketches out a quick star. He holds it up in front of Bucky before stretching the paper across his shoulder so Bucky can get a better perspective. “Like this, right?”

“Yeah, perfect,” Bucky replies, impressed.

Steve stands and says, “You can go ahead and lie down. I need to copy this on transfer paper and I’ll be right back.”

Bucky kicks up his feet and lies back on the table. He’s immediately taken back to every hospital and clinic he’s been to in the past two years, and his nervous itch returns with a vengeance, a ball of sudden anxiety welling up in his gut. He tries to focus on the tops of the trees swaying in the wind above the skylights, the shapes of the puffy white clouds moving slowly across the sky, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he can hear the beeping of multiple heart monitors, the sound of footsteps on linoleum and hushed whispers outside his room.

He doesn’t hear Steve return, but there’s a gentle hand on his shoulder. Steve can probably see Bucky visibly paling, because he says, “It’s alright. Deep breaths. We’re not going to do anything you’re not comfortable with, okay?”

“It’s…” Bucky takes a deep breath. “It’s not that.”

Steve doesn’t press for further detail, like he understands without Bucky having to explain. “Do you need water or anything?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, I’m good.”

Steve presses the transfer paper to his skin and smooths over it, then removes it and hands Bucky a mirror. “Good?”

Bucky looks at the faded outline of a purple star on his shoulder, perfectly straight lines, the size and shape exactly how he imagined it. He smiles and feels a small thrill of excitement now that he can see what at least the first part will look like. It overpowers the anxiety, and the shadow of hospitalization fades away. Bucky’s beginning to think that it’s Steve’s presence alone that calms him.

“Yeah,” he replies, and hands the mirror back.

Steve gets his supplies ready and asks, “Mind if we listen to music?”

“Go for it.”

Somewhere in the room, Steve switches on a stereo. The music starts low, just a couple notes on a piano, until other instruments join in; soft taps against a cymbal and the arrhythmic thumping of a stand-up bass.

“What’s this?” Bucky asks.

The mildly grating buzz of the tattoo gun switches on, and Steve preps Bucky’s shoulder. “Miles Davis. ‘Kind of Blue.’ Figure we’d go for relaxing to start. Ready?”

Bucky takes a deep breath and nods, and his body tenses for the onslaught of agonizing pain.

It’s…anticlimactic.

The tattoo gun against his skin feels like a constant paper cut, but without the dull throb of the aftermath. It’s just the feeling of the initial surprising slice that’s briefly jarring and massively irritating. It’s nowhere near the agony of being stabbed to relieve a collapsed lung, or the undulating burn of skin melting off, flesh to muscle and all the way to bone.

“Not so bad, right?” Steve asks in the same low, intimate voice as before, the _by comparison_ implied. Bucky realizes that the question isn’t innocuous small talk or a way to make sure Bucky is okay. It’s a question asked in understanding. Because Steve knows. He knows pain like Bucky knows pain.

Bucky is acutely aware of how close Steve is to him. He can feel his body heat, gentle fingers on his shoulder as he wipes off blood and ink. Bucky can feel him draw across his skin with confident, assured movements, one line after the next.

“Yeah,” Bucky replies. “It’s not bad.” He listens to the music for a moment before asking, “So how long have you been back?” He doesn’t bother asking if Steve’s a vet, because he’s already figured it out; the careful way Steve moves, the neatness of the room, the slight haunted look behind his eyes that’s one shade different than civilians. To anyone else, Steve seems like a charismatic, happy-go-lucky kind of guy, but Bucky sees something else there; darkness, like invisible gunpowder etched on his skin.

“Going on four years,” Steve replies. “You?”

“A year, about.”

Steve nods. “The first year is rough. Everything’s…”

“Too much,” Bucky concludes.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Too much.”

Maybe it’s the sharp pain in his shoulder that’s reminding him of all the other pain he’s been through. Maybe it’s talking to another vet for the first time since he got out of the hospital. Maybe it’s just Steve. But Bucky blurts out, “It was an IED.”

He can see Steve nod in his peripheral vision, face trained into respectful understanding instead of pity or shock.

So Bucky continues. He tells Steve the whole story, every horrific detail, about how he was patrolling on a particularly dusty morning, about how the haze of kicked-up dirt made it hard to see. He tells Steve that he wasn’t even scared when he first saw it, rolling across the street toward a couple young girls on their way home from school. He shouted at them in broken language, but they couldn’t hear him over the whipping wind. So he ran to them, pushed them out of the way and into a ditch.

The blast didn’t hurt, at first. The feeling of shrapnel piercing through his body felt like getting stung by a bee. The smell of charring flesh reminded him of a barbecue; the explosion, like firecrackers. And all he could think about was sitting on his fire escape in Brooklyn, feet dangling, staring above the rooftops on the Fourth of July, eating homemade apple pie and watching the fireworks display.

That was when the pain began, and it hasn’t stopped since. Not really. Not where it counts.

“I wasn’t even glad I got to go home,” Bucky explains. “Brooklyn wasn’t the same when I got back.”

“I had the same problem.That’s why I moved out here.” Steve’s voice is quiet, filled with more empathy than sympathy, and Bucky appreciates him for that.

Then Bucky realizes what Steve just said. “Wait. You’re from Brooklyn too? No shit?”

The tension dissipates when Steve smiles. “No shit.”

“It’s becoming painfully obvious to me why Natasha insisted that I come to you.”

“I was thinking the same thing. She’s tricky like that.”

“’Tricky’ is a real nice way of saying ‘conniving and manipulative.’”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, “but her heart’s in the right place.”

Bucky relaxes then, probably more than he has in a year.

#

The second hour is as easy as the first. Steve finishes the star and gets out a set of markers to start free-handing the rest of the tattoo. He stops once to change the music—”We’ve made our way up to Coltrane,” he says—and maneuvers Bucky around on the table, sitting up and lying down and rolling over onto his stomach. When he’s done with the markers, he asks, “You want to look at it, make sure you like it?”

The sensible part of Bucky’s brain says that he should, in case he hates it. But it’s becoming apparent to him that the sensible part of his brain doesn’t work properly around Steve.

“Nah,” he says, “I trust you.”

Steve pauses, smiles to himself, and preps his gun, then lays Bucky down on his back to start at his lower stomach.

#

They talk sometimes. They’re silent through others. Steve tells Bucky that he went through the foster care system, and that’s why they probably never ran into each other as kids; Steve had to switch schools a lot. He tells Bucky about how he grew up glorifying violence as bravery because his asthma kept him from sports, but he still picked fights like nobody’s business, and that’s what led him to enlist. He says that when he joined up, he was a skinny kid who never showed his art to anybody, but that after bulking up out of necessity and enduring four years in the desert, he came home and realized life was too short to not pursue his real passion.

“But, you know,” Steve begins, “I’m a practical guy. I’m not so much into art for art’s sake. Tattoos are practical art. Comic books are practical art. It’s art in motion.”

“So you’re a comic book artist too?” Bucky asks.

“Yep,” Steve replies, and then points around the room at the walls covered in comic pages.

“Wait, so you drew all of these?”

“Most of it, yeah. Marvel puts me on Captain America duty mostly, kind of their twisted little joke.”

“Because you’re basically just like him?”

Steve huffs a laugh. “Thanks, but I’m not as much like him as I look. I think Captain America stands for everything I thought war would be but isn’t. So I have this kind of…love-hate relationship with him now.”

“Makes sense,” Bucky replies. After a hesitant pause, he adds, “There’s this quote I memorized a long time ago. I don’t read much, but, you know, being overseas is pretty boring and eventually I just picked up whatever I could find to pass the time.”

Steve nods. “I remember.”

“Most everyone carried around shit like Harry Potter,” Bucky continues, “but some sick fuck had the audacity to be reading about the Civil War. The _Civil fucking War_. Like, we’re thousands of miles away, getting blown up and killed and we don’t even remember _why_ most days, and this jackass is using _even more war_ to distract himself from the one we’re fighting. So, of course, I fucking read that shit. Because I was that pissed about it. Anyway, there was this quote that stuck with me. I read it over and over again, couldn’t get it out of my head.”

It feels weird saying it out loud, but he begins, enunciating the words in the way he hears them in his head, “’But what a cruel thing is war; to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world. I pray that, on this day when only peace and goodwill are preached to mankind, better thoughts may fill the hearts of our enemies and turn them to peace.’”

A heavy silence falls between them, like Steve is hit as hard by those words as Bucky was. He continues to work, and the pain is starting to get worse with every new layer of shading. The gun pierces into skin that’s already been worked over by another color. Layer upon layer, the pain goes from irritating to a constant thrum of unpleasant sensation under his skin.

The pain and the memories make him slip into a dark place. He lifts his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose and squeeze his eyes shut.

“I didn’t join up because I wanted to,” he says. “I only joined because I had nowhere else to go. You know what it’s like…the bad parts of town. College is a TV dream. It’s an option for other people; smart people, rich people, people who don’t gotta worry about their next meal or what’s gonna happen to their feet when their shoes wear out in winter. And the government, they love picking up us city rats and convincing us our lives are worth something to somebody. But they’re not. Lost my arm, almost died, and everybody I came across, when they found out it wasn’t some heroic thing where I saved the good guys, just two girls—fuck, like they were enemies or something—everybody just looked _irritated_. Like I was inconveniencing them for taking up a bed. Like they wished I just died because it’s so much easier to manage a dead body than a living one.”

Tears sting the corners of his vision. He can’t control them as they roll down the sides of his face. “That’s all I am to them, you know? That’s all we are. Bodies holding guns.”

Steve keeps working, and Bucky can’t bear to look at him. He feels the small, steady movement of the tattoo gun, the acute pain that’s bordering on overwhelming, the rough scratch of a paper towel as Steve clears away the excess ink and blood. Over and over again, methodical, like meditation.

“For what it’s worth,” Steve says, quiet but filled with conviction, “I’m happy you’re alive.”

Bucky thinks it might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to him.

#

By the time the tattoo is done, Bucky is in a weird head space, like he set his morphine drip too high. It’s not that the pain is gone, but he’s distant from it, like it’s happening to someone else.

The sharp snap of Steve removing his gloves pulls him out of his trance.

“How’re you feeling?” Steve asks, and reaches beside his desk to get out a bottle of water from a mini fridge. He tosses it to Bucky, who catches it as he stands up from the special chair for back work. He uncaps it with his thumb and forefinger—a trick he’s still getting used to—and takes a long pull from it. His muscles are sore from how long they’d been clenched, and he can feel the beginnings of his next bout of phantom limb lock.

“Tired,” Bucky replies.

“I bet. I’ve never sat through more than an hour. I think I’d go crazy. You ready to see it?”

Bucky nods, afraid to look down. He’d been avoiding watching Steve work, partly because he was scared he’d chicken out, and partly because he only wanted to see the finished product.

Steve leads him down the steps and into a hallway that ends in a set of three mirrors, two of which face each other, like a dressing room.

Bucky stands in front of it, and Steve behind him, hands on his hips, looking nervous.

At first, Bucky doesn’t recognize himself. It’s a split-second where the messy hair and dead eyes don’t belong to him at all. He’d grown up always impeccably groomed and bright-eyed. It was the only way he could deviate from being immediately branded as an inner-city kid. He managed to score dates and pick up odd jobs by mastering a sly grin and an enthusiastic attitude.

He pulls himself together long enough to trail his gaze down to his stomach. Above his hipbone, wrapping from his navel all the way to his back is a solid black silhouette of the Brooklyn skyline. The tops of the towers fade as they taper upward, except for black-ink birds that cover up the dots of scarring on his chest, flying toward the big red star that serves as the centerpiece. Steve colored in the stump of his arm with solid black that fades in a gradient back into his skin, like smoke. He turns in the mirror, and watches as the calm city slowly transitions from black, to blue, to red, and becomes a forest engulfed in flames, a roaring fire that takes up the entire left side of his back. It’s hyper-realistic but also abstract, and it covers all of the scarring by sight. If Bucky were to trail his fingers over his skin, he would be able to feel their wrinkled texture, but otherwise, the scars are gone.

He looks at Steve in the reflection, lost for words. Steve nods, jaw clenched, and Bucky can’t tell if he’s shy or concerned or what, but Bucky spins around and pulls Steve into a hug, buries his face in his neck and says, “Thank you.”

Steve wraps his arm around Bucky’s non-inked side and holds him like that, easy, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Ready to show the class?” Natasha asks from behind them.

Bucky lets go of Steve and says, “You really gotta quit sneaking up on me like that.”

“It’s not my fault your hearing sucks.”

Bucky rolls his eyes and turns around in front of Natasha. She tilts her head as she stares, appraising, walking around him in a circle.

“This is amazing,” she says finally, looking up at Steve. “You’re a genius.”

Steve scratches the back of his neck. “Thanks.”

“You should really take it to heart,” Bucky says. “I’ve known her almost a decade and I’ve never heard her compliment anyone before.”

She glares at him. “No, it’s just that you never do anything worth complimenting.”

“That’s not true,” Bucky argues. “I make good mac ‘n’ cheese.”

“You overcook a pot of noodles and melt a block of cheddar in it. It’s not mac ‘n’ cheese, it’s literally just macaroni and cheese.”

Bucky shrugs, “What can I say? I’m a minimalist.”

“Alright, well, when you two are done bickering, let me know,” Steve says, but he’s smiling. “We still have some wrapping up to do.”

#

By ‘wrapping up,’ Steve apparently meant literally wrapping Bucky in plastic wrap. He gives Bucky a quick tutorial on tattoo maintenance, and Bucky has just finished putting on his shirt when Steve hands him a business card.

“I don’t normally do this,” he says, “but if you need anything, or have any questions, my cell phone number’s on the back. Feel free to text me. You know…whenever.”

Steve is all confident and casual, and it makes something in Bucky’s chest flutter. He meets Steve’s gaze and smiles, genuinely, for the first time in over a year.

#

Most people, Bucky thinks, when given the phone number of an excessively attractive and talented human being, would probably wait, say, a week maybe. Two if they’re playing hard to get.

And Bucky tries. God, does he try.

He plans in his head what he’s going to say and how suave it’ll be, so clever and witty that Steve will totally, definitely ask him out.

It takes three days for Bucky to cave.

_Me: IT ITCHES. OH GOD IT ITCHES SO BAD_

_Me: WHAT DO I DO_

_Me: THE SKIN IS FLAKING OFF? IS THE SKIN SUPPOSED TO COME OFF?_

_Me: AM I DYING?_

Steve replies within a few minutes.

_Steve: I really hope this is someone I’ve tattooed and not…well, anyone else._

_Me: Sorry its bucky_

_Steve: Hey Bucky. ;)_

_Steve: Don’t scratch it._

_Steve: And no, you’re not dying._

_Me: Thats all you got for me? Dont scratch it?_

_Me: THIS IS HELL_

_Steve: Try some vaseline, ok? It’ll help._

_Me: Ok ill try that thx_

When Bucky puts on his jacket to head to the store, Natasha asks him to pick up a couple things while he’s out. Bucky doesn’t think much of it until the cashier gives him an odd look, because the only items he buys are Vaseline, beer, and bananas.

He doesn’t bother explaining.

#

Bucky expends an inordinate amount of willpower trying not to text Steve every stupid thought that floats through his head, like how he puts sugar on his Cheerios just so he can drink sugar-saturated milk by the time he gets to the bottom; what he thinks of the episode of _Law & Order: SVU_ he just watched; and his internal battle with whether or not he should cut his hair.

Instead, he bugs Natasha about all of those things, and she generally responds with a glare that says she’s five seconds away from choking him to death.

Thankfully, Steve texts him a few days later.

Natasha is sitting next to Bucky when his phone goes off, legs over his lap while they watch _Some Like it Hot_ , and he assumes it’s one of those advertisement texts he gets sometimes, because the only person who texts him is busy giggling unabashedly at Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.

His heart leaps into his throat when he sees Steve’s name.

_Steve: How’s it healing?_

Bucky hesitates in replying, not wanting to seem too eager, but then his poor impulse control gets the best of him, so he types out a reply.

_Me: Good. Itching not as bad. Peeling gross but cool. Bruising not great_

_Me: Natasha got mad at me for using the word slut so she punched my shoulder and I thought I was gonna die_

_Steve: Well, to be fair…_

_Me: Yea I know that now. Got a long lecture on postmodern feminism after that_

There’s not much to say to that, and since Bucky doesn’t see the ellipses that tells him Steve is replying, he adds:

_Me: How you been?_

_Steve: Good. Busy working on a new big project due in a couple weeks._

_Me: That sounds awesome_

_Steve: Yeah, it’s great. Just time consuming. Sleep is a commodity these days. Mostly because Tony won’t stop trying to pry spoilers out of me._

_Steve: Hey, speaking of, Thor’s dead serious about taking you out drinking._

_Me: Yea I got that impression_

_Steve: Sorry about that. He’s…intense._

_Steve: Anyway, Tony was talking about throwing me a thing when I’m done with this comic and I figure two birds one stone you know?_

_Steve: Thor takes you drinking and stops bugging Natasha about it. Tony gets to utilize his weird pseudo-club he built. You get free booze. Win win win._

_Me: And whats your win?_

_Steve: Hopefully you’ll show me your healed ink._

Bucky watches the little ellipses rise and fall as Steve continues typing and then presumably backspaces. Finally, he gets another text.

_Steve: And I get to attend my own party with a date for once._

“What are you smiling about?” Natasha asks. Bucky shows her the string of texts.

“Damn,” she says, scrolling through them. “Boy moves fast. Although, to be honest, I thought I was going to find you two fucking on his table. So I’m proud of you both for keeping your dicks in your pants this long.”

“Wait, you knew?”

Natasha gives him a pitying look and replies, “James, after a decade, I think I’m pretty good at spotting your type.”

“Oh yeah? What’s my type?”

She snorts a laugh. “Obnoxiously, offensively perfect.”

“Well then,” Bucky says, “it’s no wonder I’ve never asked you out.”

Natasha lifts her leg from his lap and kicks his shoulder.

“Ow, fuck! I’m still bruised to shit, Jesus!” He exclaims, batting Natasha’s leg back down on his lap. His phone beeps again. “Speak of the devil,” he says through gritted teeth.

_Steve: It’s ok if you’d rather not. Totally understand. Probably should have checked if you even swung that way first._

_Me: Oh I definitely swing your way_

_Me: Gravitational pull your way is more accurate tbh_

_Steve: XD_

_Steve: I’ll text you more details when I know them. I’m going to be holed up for a while finishing this thing so Tony may end up texting Natasha about it first._

_Me: Sounds good. Looking forward to it ;)_

_Steve: I gotta get back to work, but you should text me tomorrow if you get a chance. Make sure I’m still sane._

_Me: Will do_

“You’re still grinning like an idiot,” Natasha says. “I take it you didn’t fuck it up too bad?”

In retaliation, Bucky calmly sets down his phone, stares straight ahead at the television, and tickles the bottom of Natasha’s foot. She yelps and kicks in his lap while screaming, “Not fair! Fuck you, Barnes!”

#

So Bucky texts Steve the next day. And the next. And the next.

It’s never for long, because Steve explains that he needs intense focus to finish his project, and he can’t text in the middle of tattooing. Still, it gives Bucky a reason to smile every day, which feels as foreign as it does welcome.

A couple weeks later, Bucky’s dozing on a lazy Sunday afternoon when Natasha rushes into his room and does a front flip onto his bed. He wakes up with a start. “The hell?”

She falls into the small space between Bucky’s body at the wall. Natasha is the least lovingly affectionate person he knows, but she’s still a touch-craved lunatic. Like a cat, sort of, but scarier.

“What d’you want?” Bucky asks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Stark texted me. Party’s on Saturday,” Natasha replies, shifting onto her back and lifting her phone above them. She shows him the text.

_IRON MAN LOL: Sat. 10pm. Rendezbooze to celebrate Steve finishing the first draft of the modern-day reboot of THE AVENGERS._

Bucky’s phone buzzes under his pillow and he checks it.

_Steve: 10pm Saturday. I’m going to be working down to the wire otherwise I’d ask you to dinner first._

Natasha’s phone dings three more times.

_Sammycakes: I’m in._

_Clint the Magnificent: same_

_Thor Just Thor: LET US DRINK IN MERRIMENT_

“Does he always type in caps?” Bucky asks as Natasha gets another text.

_Thor Just Thor: AND WE SHALL CELEBRATE THE IMMENSE SUCCESS OF OUR KIN_

_Cap’n: Thanks, Thor._

Natasha types out a reply.

_Me: James & I will be there_

_IRON MAN LOL: Ok good we’re decided then_

_Thor Just Thor: YES MOST EXCELLENT_

_Thor Just Thor: I AM LOOKING QUITE FORWARD TO THIS EVENT_

_Thor Just Thor: :)_

Bucky replies to Steve on his phone.

_Me: Thats ok. Breakfast works too ;)_

#

“Should I get a haircut?” Bucky asks on Tuesday evening while they’re doing the dishes.

“Yes,” Natasha replies, not looking up from the sink.

“Don’t think too hard about it.”

“You look like you’re six months into the zombie apocalypse,” Natasha adds, handing him a plate to put away.

“Jesus, I get it.”

She hands him another one and continues, “Not even as a survivor. Just a zombie. Who really needs a haircut.”

#

So Bucky gets a haircut. And buys new clothes on Natasha’s dime.

“You’re wearing the same shirts you wore in high school. And the same pants. And probably the same underwear,” she says, flipping through clearance sale racks and shoving clothes-laden hangers at him.

The store makes him twitchy. He can’t make his heartbeat slow down. The corners of his vision blur and there’s a squeezing sensation in his chest that’s making it hard to breathe. There are too many obstacles he can’t see behind and the lights are too bright. He feels like everyone is staring at his lack of arm and judging him for it. He can’t stop himself from thinking they’re going to pull a gun on him and finish him off. Worse, they’ll pull a gun on Natasha instead.

Apparently, he says as much out loud.

Natasha gives him a terse nod and immediately kicks into gear. “Okay, so we’ll buy what we have and I’ll return what doesn’t fit next week.” She takes the clothes from him with one hand and takes his hand in the other before heading toward the register.

Later, on the bus, a giant white shopping bag between his legs, Bucky says, “Maybe going to this party is a bad idea. I can’t even be in public for two hours without having an almost-meltdown.”

Natasha rests her head on his shoulder. “I’m not going to say ‘you’ll be fine’ because I don’t know. But I do know that your health is priority over partying, so we can always cut out early if we need to.”

Bucky kisses the top of her head. “You’re too good to me.”

“I’m really not,” she replies. “You’re just too acclimated to shitty people.”

#

On Saturday night, Bucky fusses over his own reflection for way too long. Natasha insisted that he wear a long-sleeved button-up t-shirt for the occasion, but Bucky hates it because he has to pin one of the sleeves up. He doesn’t want to have to deal with that, so he ends up in a plain black t-shirt and jeans. He slicks back his hair like he used to before he went overseas, and he’s just about to chicken out and cancel when Natasha knocks on his bedroom door.

“We’re going to be late,” she says.

“We’re already late,” Bucky replies.

“We’re fashionably late, like we’re supposed to be. We’re about to border on rudely late if you don’t get your shit together.”

Bucky opens the door and meets Natasha’s irritated expression before combing his eyes down what appears to be a two-foot long tube of black fabric stretched over her body.

She looks him over in turn and says, “You look like you crawled out of Liberace’s trash can."

“Yeah, well, you look…” He searches his mind for an insult and comes up blank. “…nice.”

She beams at him. “I know.”

#

“This isn’t a bar,” Bucky says, taking off his helmet. They’re in an even worse part of town than Shield & Hammer, staring at a building that could be anything from an abandoned warehouse to an abandoned asylum. Either way, it’s definitely abandoned. The building is five stories tall with loft-style windows, many of which are broken or boarded up.

“It’s not supposed to be a bar,” Natasha says.

“Then why the hell are we here?”

“Consider it a private club,” she replies, and switches her flip-flops out for heels before making her way to the front entrance.

Bucky follows her through a set of heavy metal double-doors. The hallway they enter has flickering florescent lights, and broken furniture spans the walls between doors labeled with rusted numbers.

At the end of the hallway lies a freight elevator, the old kind that opens sideways. Natasha jumps up to pull on the rope above them and the wooden slats slide apart. The elevator consists of a metal platform on which a big red button sits to lift them to the top of the building.

As they’re going up, the elevator creaks and groans like old gears grinding together.

“What the hell is this place?” Bucky asks, watching the floors pass by.

“Rendezbooze,” Natasha replies, and the elevator stops. She jumps up again to pull down the rope so that the doors slide open, and they step out into a hallway much like the first.

As they make their way down the hall, the floor begins reverberating with the bass of loud music. They reach a black door labeled 507 from which the music appears to be originating. Natasha doesn’t knock, just opens it and walks in.

She’s met immediately by a crowd of people dancing to the music, colorful laser lights slicing through the air above them. It’s a relatively small space compared to what Bucky had been expecting; a simple bar spans one wall, and a platform spans the other, on which a DJ presides. Next to him is a sitting area with dilapidated couches, and the walls are all covered with smatterings of black-light paint that glows in the darkness. The far wall consists entirely of a window that looks out onto New York City in the distance.

Behind the bar, a silver-haired guy is mixing drinks faster than Bucky can comprehend, and a girl with long brown hair and bright red nails is flipping bottles like a pro, setting things on fire periodically while she works.

“James ‘Bucky’ Barnes! Natasha Romanoff!” a voice bellows at them, and before Bucky can react, a massive arm is draped over his shoulders.

“Hey, Thor,” Natasha says on the other side of him.

“Come, let us partake in drink!” he announces, and ushers them to the bar.

Bucky looks around for Steve, but doesn’t see him in the mosh pit of party goers.

“Barkeep! A round of shots for my dearest comrades!”

The guy with silver hair pours each of them a shot.

Before Bucky can drink it, Thor shouts over the music, “To us, the modern warriors of this sacred land!” then lifts his shot in the air before lowering it to his lips and drinking it.

Bucky follows and Natasha does too. Thor slams the glass back on the table and shouts, “Another!” Silver-haired guy is at the ready to pour them more. They drink again.

Bucky’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He takes it out to find a text from Steve.

_Steve: You here yet? I hear Thor shouting and I’m concerned._

_Me: Yea he found us_

_Steve: Hold on, let me come rescue you._

A moment later, Bucky has an arm wrapped around his waist.

“Hey,” Steve says, and— _Jesus fuck_ —he’s wearing a blue button-up shirt that fits so tight that it’s almost obscene, sleeves rolled up to his elbows to expose his tattoos. He’s also wearing those goddamn pressed khakis that make his ass look like he could bounce a goddamn quarter off of it.

It takes Bucky a solid three seconds of ogling Steve before he can coherently reply, “Hey.”

“You got your hair cut,” he says, and reaches up to put an errant lock back in place. “I love it.”

“Steve Rogers! The guest of honor!” Thor shouts, clapping a hand against Steve’s shoulder. “Barkeep! Ano—”

The silver-haired guy already has four shots lined up in front of them.

“Thank you,” Thor tells him, and the guy winks before walking away to help someone else.

They each take their shots, and after Steve sets down his glass, he leans in and says in Bucky’s ear, “C’mon.”

Steve’s hand trails down Bucky’s arm and pulls him toward the stairs up to the platform. Bucky looks back to meet Natasha’s eyes, and she nods at him once to let him know it’s okay before being whisked away to the dance floor by a guy Bucky assumes is Sam.

They find a cozy corner in an otherwise chaotic place, a small couch by the window where they can see out across the dance floor and bar.

The next few hours fly by as people stop by to congratulate Steve and bring him a drink. He shakes a lot of hands, gives people hugs, introduces Bucky as his date. Every time it happens, Bucky gets a little thrill down his spine, and eventually his tipsiness from splitting Steve’s drinks outweighs his nervousness at being surrounded by so many people with so much noise and flashing lights. He begins to get the impression that Steve under-sold the actual magnitude of the project he’d been working on.

Bucky’s not sure how it happens, but eventually he ends up in Steve’s lap, sort of. They’re on the couch, and Bucky is in the V of Steve’s legs. His chin is hooked over Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky keeps asking him questions.

“So what’s up with that guy?” Bucky asks, pointing to the DJ. He’s naked from the waist up, covered in green, red, and yellow body paint. A gem rests in the center of his forehead, and the light bouncing off of it keeps glinting in Bucky’s eyes.

“That’s Vision,” Steve replies. “No idea what his real name is. He doesn’t talk much.”

Steve’s breath tickles Bucky’s cheek, lips mere inches from his own. He can feel Steve’s chest, warm and strong against his back.

“And her?” Bucky points to a girl next to Vision on the platform rocking out with a drink in her hand. Between songs, she claims she’s the emcee, but Bucky suspects she’s just really drunk.

“That’s Darcy. She’s Thor’s girlfriend’s best friend.”

“And Thor’s girlfriend is Jane,” Bucky replies.

“Yeah, see? Getting the hang of everybody already.”

Below them, Bucky can see Thor in the middle of the crowd, bigger than almost everybody else, loose hair flying as he moshes. He’s also wearing a cape. A red one that twirls around him and trips people so much that he has a wide berth in the center of the dance floor. “So, sorry if this is offensive, but what’s Thor’s deal?”

“I found him on a tattoo artist forum arguing in the comic book thread about whether or not Mjolnir could break Captain America’s shield.”

Bucky spots Tony then, going around the bar, shaking hands and mingling. “And what about Tony?”

“Tony’s the guy he was arguing with.” Steve wraps an arm around Bucky’s stomach and pulls him in closer. “I intervened in the argument eventually, saying I was something of an expert on comic book physics, but they didn’t believe me, so we all met up for coffee and comic book debate. I thought Thor was going to pass out from fanboying so hard when he found out I was really who I said I was. Anyway, a year later, the three of us opened Shield & Hammer.”

Bucky sees Sam, Natasha, and Clint dancing near the stage. “And what about Sam and Clint?”

“I met Sam at the VA and took him on as an apprentice a couple years back. Clint’s our office manager.”

Normally Bucky isn’t this inquisitive, but the alcohol is making his tongue loose. “Okay, last question, promise. What the hell is Rendezbooze?”

Steve laughs and starts moving his thumb slowly up and down Bucky’s hip. It’s a slight movement that’s setting Bucky on fire, and he’s so close to turning around and slotting his lips against Steve’s that he barely processes it when Steve replies, “A bunch of people pitch in fifty bucks a month to rent this space out. We all donate a bottle or two of booze per week. Vision DJs for free, and Wanda and Pietro bartend on tips. It’s mostly just a way for us to avoid the bars. Permanent party space.”

“That seems kind of…illegal.”

“Tony does a lot of illegal shit that I’ve never really asked about. His wife Pepper keeps him on a pretty tight leash, though. She’s a lawyer.”

Bucky would attempt to continue conversation, but Steve’s fingers make their way underneath Bucky’s shirt, running gently across the skin above the waistline of his jeans.

“My turn,” Steve says, voice lowered. “Did you and Natasha used to be…?”

Bucky snorts a laugh. “No. Never. Our relationship is…complicated.” Which isn’t exactly true. It’s actually the simplest thing in the world. “It’s a long story.”

“We have time,” Steve whispers, running his fingernails slowly across Bucky’s abdomen.

Bucky leans his head back on Steve’s shoulder and closes his eyes, tries to keep his voice steady as he says, “So…sophomore year of high school, we get this new kid in class, right? Russian girl, pretty but doesn’t smile at anyone, doesn’t talk. People think she doesn’t even know English. Moves…weird. Like a robot, calculated, hair always in a bun at the top of her head like a ballerina. Anyway, one day I get into a fight after school. And, you know, I got into a lot of fights back then. Never knew when to keep my mouth shut. This kid I’m fighting though, he decides he’s gonna play dirty, and he flicks open a switchblade. And me, being the dumb piece of shit I am, I don’t back down. He gets me into a bad position, gives me that look like he’s gonna stab me for real, and out of nowhere, this goddamn Russian ballerina comes in, breaks his wrist, and knocks him out cold.”

“Wow,” Steve replies.

“No kidding. And after that, she wouldn’t leave me the hell alone. Fuck, she hasn’t left me alone since.”

“Not gonna lie,” Steve says, “kinda sounds like she’s in love with you.” He doesn’t say it in a jealous way though, more of an open one, like he’d be down for whatever Bucky’s offering.

“Nah,” Bucky replies. “She told me that she’s…aeronautical.”

“You mean aromantic?”

“That’s the one. And I’ve never been much into women, so we’re basically just…I dunno…us, I guess.”

“Well that’s a relief,” Steve says.

Bucky turns to him, face so close that he has to cross his eyes to see clearly, “Yeah?”

Steve smiles at him in the way that simultaneously makes Bucky’s heart hurt and his dick twitch. “Yeah.”

Bucky twists in Steve’s arms. In the glow of the rapidly moving lights, he can see a dark glint in Steve’s eyes as they flicker down to Bucky’s mouth.

Steve moves in, but before their lips meet, the music stops abruptly and someone taps on the mic.

“Before we all get too drunk to function, I think we should all give a round of applause to the man of the hour, my very good friend, one of the most talented, hard-working people any of us will ever know, Steve Rogers!”

Bucky pulls away to find the entire audience staring at them. Tony is on the stage, mic in hand, grinning at them like the jackass he is.

Steve clears his throat. “Looks like I gotta say a few words.” He scrambles from behind Bucky, readjusting himself inconspicuously, and adds, “Just…don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

Everyone claps and cheers as Steve steps onto the stage. Tony puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “For those of you who aren’t in the comic book world—and if you’re not, who are you and why are you here?—you may not know what a big deal this project really is. Stevie-pie, our glorious friend here who looks alarmingly like the Cap himself, so much so that one might think Captain America is merely a self-portrait, has embarked on a journey that will go down in comic book history. For the first time since 1963, our favorite superheroes, and several of our namesakes, have re-assembled together into a team known as the Avengers.”

Steve looks down at his feet, hands in his pockets as Tony continues doting on him.

“And while I begged him on hands and knees, bribed him with a lifetime supply of free piercings, and threatened to set fire to his comic book collection, he of the Marvel employ would not give me even the smallest of spoilers. Which means, of course, that the Avengers will likely become one of the greatest stories of our generation. Steven Grant Rogers is truly a god among nerds. Let’s give him another hand, everybody.”

Tony passes Steve the mic and hooks an arm over his shoulders. “Thanks for coming out, everyone. And big thanks to Wanda, Pietro, and Vision.” He looks behind him to Vision, who nods once, solemn.

“As much as Tony would like to think this party is strictly for the Avengers reboot, he’s avoided announcing the official results of this year’s Civil War.”

Everyone cheers, and Bucky has no idea what’s going on.

“Tony, would you like to do the honors?” Steve asks, and hands the mic over.

Tony takes the mic and glares at Steve. “Alright, so just to recap, for the past three years, Steve and I have a little…competition, if you will. It started easily enough. We wanted to get some press for the shop, and we decided to raise money for the VA. And, being the competitive men we are, it kind of…spiraled out of control, and turned into a bet wherein if I won, I’d get to pierce or tattoo Steve wherever I saw fit. And if Steve won, he’d get to tattoo me. The first year, auctioning off my scrap metal sculptures was an enormous success over Steve’s…what did you do again?” Tony puts the mic in front of Steve.

“Free tattoos with a voluntary donation. And it wasn’t an ‘enormous success.’ You won by twenty bucks.”

“Whatever. So, naturally, that’s how Steve ended up with this beauty.”

Steve rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue, wherein a silver stud glints in the light.

Bucky’s phone vibrates in his pocket three times. Natasha is rapidly texting at him.

_Natasha: OBNOXIOUSLY_

_Natasha: OFFENSIVELY_

_Natasha: PERFECT_

Before Bucky can reply, he receives another.

_Natasha: If tonight doesn’t end with your dick in steve’s mouth, I’m going to be so disappointed in you_

_Me: Ill be sure to send you a selfie_

“Think of it as my gift to Steve’s present and future bedfellows.” Tony glances over at Bucky and winks at him before continuing, “The second year, I won by a similar milestone, but I may have taken my victory slightly too far—”

Steve grabs the mic back, interrupting him. “But this year, our art auction raised fifteen thousand dollars for the VA, while Tony’s naked 5k run only raised twelve. So I am pleased to announce that my retribution will be in the form of a Hello Kitty hip tattoo.”

Tony yanks the mic back and adds, “But obviously wearing Iron Man armor. Now let’s get back to drinking. Thanks again for coming out tonight, everyone. Please be sure to tip the bartenders.”

By the time Bucky puts his phone away, Steve’s in front of him again, hand outstretched. “C’mon,” he says, gesturing toward the door. “I want to show you something.”

Bucky takes his hand and lets Steve steer him out of the room. A couple people stop to congratulate him, but he gives them a pointed look while he thanks them and they back off. Eventually they make it into the hallway.

“Where are we going?” Bucky asks as Steve leads him the opposite direction from the freight elevator.

“Here,” Steve says, and stops in front of a white door labeled 510. Planks of wood are scattered around the scuffed checkered tile and stacks of boxes are huddled in a corner.

Steve lets go of Bucky’s hand to pull his keys out of his pocket and open the door. The room is dark save for the glow of the city streaming into the loft windows. Steve flicks on a light and Bucky looks around, still confused as to where the hell they are.

The room is roughly the size of Rendezbooze. Three walls are empty cement brick, and the floors are a dark hardwood. The ceilings are high, comprised entirely of white-painted piping. There’s a black sheet draped over the center of the far wall, a metal folding chair in front of it, and a camera on a tripod facing the set-up. The only other piece of furniture in the room is a couch, much like the ones in Rendezbooze.

“What the hell is this place?” Bucky asks.

“My studio,” Steve says, closing the door behind them.

“Hold on,” Bucky begins, “you have your own tattoo shop, your own private club, and a studio?”

“And a house. But when you put it like that, it seems…excessive.”

The thrum of bass makes it all the way to the studio, the distant buzz of music from across the hall. “That’s because it kind of is.”

“What happened was that Tony was looking for a place to set up his Rendezbooze idea and our realtor—name’s Coulson if you ever need one, great guy—struck up a deal with the owner of this building, and we basically got both spaces for dirt cheap. So I come here sometimes to paint, or I rent it out to photographers or craft fairs. Most recently, I had all my art buddies donate a piece and then we held an art show. Proceeds all went to charity.”

“And that was the Civil War thing Tony mentioned.”

Steve nods. “Yep.”

“What happened the second year, by the way?” Bucky asks. “The first year was a tongue stud, and the second year…?”

“We don’t talk about that,” Steve replies, but he’s smiling. Before Bucky can protest, Steve says, “So I was wondering…” He fiddles with the camera on the tripod. “I’m trying to put together a portfolio for the shop website my friend Maria is about to launch…”

Bucky leans against the wall, already on board with wherever this is going. “Right.”

“And I thought maybe the work I did on you could go in it.”

“Which means you’d have to take my picture,” Bucky supplies.

Steve looks at him, a bit on the shy side even though Bucky can see a decidedly deviant glint in his eyes. “If you’re alright with that.”

Maybe it’s the tipsiness that takes Bucky back half a decade, when he used to be nothing but confidence and swagger. Instead of replying, he pulls at the hem of his shirt and slides it over his head. He drops it onto the couch and strides over to the folding chair, spinning it around and straddling it. “I’m alright with it.”

Steve grins at him for a long moment, beautiful crooked smile that makes Bucky want to kiss him like there’s no tomorrow. He backs away to turn on the lights hanging in small silver umbrellas, then turns off the main lights of the room. They cast a yellow, almost orange, glow over him. Bucky blinks once, and for a second, he’s back in the blast, where there was nothing but brightness and fire and pain. He blinks again and he’s in the studio, grounded by Steve’s peaceful presence as he lifts the camera to his eye and starts snapping pictures.

The rapid shutter of the lens reminds Bucky of the patter of gunfire, but like the lights, he can acknowledge the brief lapses of reality and let them slide off of him. Easy and surprisingly relaxed, Bucky says, “I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Tell me a story,” Steve replies, making his way around Bucky to get the detail of his back.

Bucky rifles through his short list of personal anecdotes and tries to find one that doesn’t involve gratuitous violence. He fails, so he picks one at random. “I got banned from McDonald’s.”

“Like…all of them?” Steve asks.

“Yep.”

“How’d that happen?” Steve gently lifts Bucky’s arm to get a better angle and continues shooting.

“Before I enlisted, there was a year between when I graduated high school and got sent off to boot camp. I picked up a job at the docks, found a shit hole apartment. Drove a run-down old truck that could barely make it to and from work. Back then, I had one singular luxury: once a week, I would get myself a double cheeseburger, some fries, and a Coke from McDonald’s. One night, my truck’s this close to breaking down, making all sorts of noises, and I know I won’t be able to take it in until I get paid next. But on my way home from the docks, I still go through the drive-thru and get my burger, fries, and Coke, then head home to settle in with whatever book I’d picked up from the library. At this point, I’d worked sixty hours that week already, I was exhausted, and the three bucks I spent on McDonald’s left me with a grand total of eleven cents left to last me for two days.”

When Steve switches to his front, Bucky stands from the chair and begins pacing while he talks. Steve moves around him, snapping picture after picture.

“And I mean, these were bad times. That fucking meal was the highlight of my week. It was the only thing I had going for me back then. Bad day on the job? Two more days until my meal. Tired of oatmeal and ramen? Just one more day until my meal. It’s what got me through. So on this particular night, I open up the wrapper, mouth watering, and instead of a burger, it’s just…a bun. An empty fuckin’ bun.”

“Then what happened?” Steve asks, one hand on the lens to focus it on the cityscape wrapping around Bucky’s stomach.

“So I take the bun, climb back into the truck—which is running on fumes at this point—and drive all the way back to McD’s. I walk inside the damn building, storm up to the register, and drop the bun on the counter. I’m so angry that I can’t even talk. I just point at it. And this kid, this poor kid—who probably wasn’t much younger than I was at the time, but who obviously lived a totally different life than me—he just starts laughing. Head back, tears streaming down his face _laughter_.”

“Shit,” Steve says. “What’d you do?”

“I jumped the counter and slapped the crap out of him.”

Bucky half expects Steve to chastise him, but instead he nearly drops the camera laughing.

“So, yeah. That’s the story of how I got banned from McDonald’s.”

Steve stands up and takes one more picture, this one of Bucky’s face, and Bucky can feel how stupid his dopey grin is, but he doesn’t really care. Steve sets the camera down on the chair and steps closer to him, lays a hand against his side and runs a thumb across his hip. “Sometimes it feels like we live in a whole other world than everyone else, you know?”

Bucky nods. “One without McDonald’s.” Entirely of its own volition, Bucky’s hand runs up Steve’s arm and cradles the back of his neck. He can feel Steve’s warmth, radiating off of him, the way he smells like simplicity: plain soap and detergent, probably the off-brand kind, so much different than the way other guys in New York smell, with their overpriced aftershave and cologne like they bathe in it.

Steve lets his eyes fall to Bucky’s lips, and leans in.

Bucky pulls away a fraction of an inch, mouth twitching into a smile. “But Steve, we’ve been drinking. What would Captain America think?”

Steve scoffs and replies, “Captain America’s not here right now, and technically he can’t even get drunk, so he has no right to cockblock me with his self-righteous moral high-ground.” He leans forward again until their lips are barely brushing. “Why?” he asks, letting his fingers tug one of Bucky’s belt loops until their bodies are slotted together. “Do you want me to stop?” Bucky can feel Steve’s lips ghost against his own, just enough to tickle but not enough to satisfy, and it’s starting to unravel him.

Bucky’s eyes flutter shut. “God, no.”

Then their lips press together, soft at first, exploring. They both taste like the drinks they’d been sharing, sweet liquors and fruit, and Steve’s mouth is every bit as demanding as he is. He leads the kiss like he knows exactly what Bucky wants, and Bucky drinks it in like he’s dying for it. His fingers card through Steve’s hair as the kiss heats, Bucky’s mouth opening to let their tongues meet between increasingly breathless pauses, the metal of the tongue stud adding an electricity to the kiss that Bucky’s never felt before. Bucky sucks Steve’s lower lip into his mouth and bites it while Steve lets out a soft groan and scrapes down Bucky’s back with the tips of his fingers, pulling them together so that every inch of their bodies is touching.

He trails down Bucky’s neck with kisses, murmuring against his skin, “Been waiting for this forever. Second I saw you, I knew.”

Bucky stifles the moans that threaten to escape him as he asks, “Knew what?”

“Knew I needed this. You. Wasn’t enough to ink your skin. Needed to taste it, too.”

“Jesus,” Bucky exhales, and Steve guides him over to the couch, presses him down and straddles his thighs. He combs his fingers through Bucky’s hair and leans down to kiss him again, and Bucky thinks he might just explode from the sheer hotness that is the six feet of blond-hair, blue-eyed prolific artist in his lap, devouring him like he’s candy.

Bucky reaches up and begins unbuttoning Steve’s shirt, slowly, patiently. Even though he wants to just tear it off of him, it’s too easy to fumble with one hand, so he takes his time. Steve whimpers with impatience, a slight sound that Bucky feels against the jut of his jaw where Steve is lavishing him with open-mouthed kisses. It goes straight to his dick, which is already straining against the fly of his jeans.

When the shirt is open, Steve yanks it off of his shoulders and tosses it aside. Bucky has an eye-full of the rest of Steve’s tattoos, which make up a solid portion of his chiseled chest and stomach. The centerpiece of it all is Captain America’s shield over his heart, and the other comic book characters work around it, from the familiar to the obscure, trailing from his collarbone down into the waistline of his pants.

Bucky immediately leans forward to kiss Steve’s chest in the middle of the star, then trails down and wraps his lips around the nipple below it, laving at it until Steve lets out a soft moan and flexes his hips, pressing his hardness into Bucky’s.

Steve reaches between them and thumbs at the button of Bucky’s jeans. “Can I touch you?” he asks, foreheads pressed together and voice fucked-out, somewhere between biting out the words and moaning them, like he’s using every ounce of his self-restraint not to rip Bucky’s pants off and fuck him right there.

And that’s when it hits Bucky, because the shards of his fractured identity fly at him at once until he realizes he’d discarded all of them in the span of the past half hour with Steve. Part of him wants to come up with a witty, teasing retort. Part of him feels like he should be panicking with self-consciousness, because Steve fucking Rogers wants to get him naked, and Bucky’s body is literal trash at this point. Part of him wants to hate Steve for wanting him at all.

The part of him that wins, though, is the one that says, simply, “Yes.”

Steve opens his fly and slowly slides his hand into the waistband of Bucky’s boxers, cupping him in his palm while he kisses him again, deeper and slower than before, everything drawn out so that the only thing Bucky can possibly focus on is the pleasure of it all. Steve’s hand on his dick is as practiced as his art; lithe, nimble fingers tugging at him until Bucky is gasping into his mouth.

Right as his muscles begin to tense up and the knot of pressure builds in his spine, Steve removes his hand and slides down the couch, settling between Bucky’s legs.

“Fuck, Steve,” Bucky grits out, hand automatically running through Steve’s hair.

He looks up at Bucky, smiling with that crooked smile that Bucky’s been daydreaming about since they met, charming, wholesome blue eyes nearly eclipsed with the heady darkness in them. Steve’s the kind of guy whom, if Bucky ever had a picket-fence family, he’d take home to meet them, and all Bucky would ever be able to think about at the dinner table is what a monster he is between the sheets, what he looks like with spit-slick lips and teeth marks on his collarbone, the way his neatly combed hair is mucked up from Bucky’s fingers, and those goddamn iron-pressed khakis rumpled on the floor.

Steve leans forward and pushes down the elastic of Bucky’s boxers until his cock is free, leaking a steady stream and glistening with it from Steve’s hand, and Steve looks at him like he’s starved for it. It sends a jolt of pleasure through Bucky, who waits, breath held. Steve leans forward and gently rolls the ball of his tongue stud up the length of Bucky’s cock, stopping at the head to flick it with the tip of his tongue.

Bucky’s head falls back against the couch while he clenches his thigh muscles to keep from thrusting into Steve’s mouth.

Steve wraps his lips around the head of Bucky’s dick and swallows him down like the cocksucking champ he apparently is. And Bucky is wasted on it, mind whiting out into nothingness and the feel of a tongue stud making obscene patterns on the underside of his cock.

Bucky accidentally pulls too hard on Steve’s hair, but it makes him moan, the vibration from the sound setting Bucky on fire from the bottom of his spine upward until he can hardly breathe with it, so close to the brink that he has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from coming. He tugs on Steve’s hair again and Steve’s hand immediately goes to his lap. Bucky can hear the sound of a belt buckle loosening, a fly unzipping, and the relieved moan of Steve as he jacks himself off while sucking Bucky down.

Bucky can barely make his voice work, but he manages, “Steve, I’m…”

Steve nods once, lips and tongue gliding up and down the length of Bucky’s cock, and all Bucky can think is _offensively, obnoxiously perfect_ before he’s coming down Steve’s throat, hair gripped in his hand and thrusting into his mouth, a spew of curses escaping Bucky’s lips in a steady flow. Steve follows immediately after, body stiffening and then moaning around Bucky’s cock again, muscles twitching with the waves of his orgasm.

Steve lifts off Bucky and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before climbing back onto Bucky’s lap and kissing him again. He can taste himself on Steve’s tongue, bittersweetness tangled with a metallic edge, and _god,_ Bucky hasn’t felt this good in maybe ever, not since he was a teenager with his first set of wheels and a best friend with a daring streak, driving down back roads in the middle of the night with no destination in mind.

Steve makes Bucky feel more free than the freedom they both supposedly fought for, and he wants to do this again every day for the rest of his life.

With a long sigh, Steve pulls away, rests their forehead together and, breathless, says, “It’s hard…finding people with similar life experience.”

Bucky nods in agreement, those few words saying everything that it’s probably too early to say. But they have time, Bucky realizes. They have their whole lives ahead of them, and for the first time, Bucky is glad for that.

Once they’ve caught their breath, Steve says, “We should probably do a final round before we leave.”

“Where’re we going?” Bucky asks, slurred, the thought of moving right now burdensome on his useless muscles.

“My place?” Steve says, an upward lilt like it’s a question. “I mean, you did say I could take you out for breakfast.”

#

They head back to Rendezbooze so Steve can reiterate his goodbyes and thank-yous. Apparently, everyone knows him well enough to figure out that they’re headed _home_ because they’re _tired._

Natasha gives Bucky one look while Steve is politely chatting up a group of people, and says, “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

Bucky huffs a laugh. “Thanks.”

She nudges his shoulder with hers and adds, “But really, I’m proud of you and I’m glad you came out tonight. You need a ride home, or…?”

“No thanks. I’m going back to Steve’s place. Where are you headed?”

Natasha turns her attention to Clint, Sam, Thor, and Darcy, the remaining four people on the dance floor, still partying like it’s not almost four a.m. “I think we’re going out for late-night shawarma.”

“That sounds…fun. I think.”

She lifts up on her toes and kisses him on the cheek. “Text me in the morning, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Bucky replies.

He’s about to go find Steve again when a heavy hand thumps him on the back.

He looks over to find Tony staring at him, smiling with unparalleled smugness. “You’re welcome,” is all he says before walking away again.

#

They hold hands in the taxi to Steve’s place. Bucky thinks that maybe he died on the operating table, and Steve Rogers is his afterlife thank-you gift.

#

The next morning, Bucky wakes up to the warmth of Steve’s bare chest against his back, pressing sleepy kisses against his neck. Bucky slowly blinks open his eyes, looking for the first time at Steve’s bedroom in the light of day. The house is in an old neighborhood, and the inside is pristine in the way his tattoo shop isn’t. Everything is crisp and white with hardwood trim. Steve explained last night that he bought the house for cheap, barely more than a hunk of rubble on a foundation, and gutted it; rebuilt it from scratch. The morning sun streams through the curtains of the big bay window, and Bucky is covered in a quilt made out of Steve’s old comic book t-shirts he outgrew when he, as he explained, “bulked up.”

Steve continues peppering slow, lazy kisses against Bucky’s neck and shoulder, shifting against him until Bucky can feel the hard line of his cock at his back. He lets out a soft groan when Bucky pushes into it, and reaches between them to press a finger at Bucky’s entrance, whispering through the low scratch of a sleep-filled voice, “This okay?”

Bucky nods, letting Steve take over. A bottle of lube is uncapped, a condom wrapper opened, and slick fingers stretch him wide, one by one, until he’s gripping the sheets in his hand and making an embarrassing amount of noise, a litany of curses that slowly turn into begging. Then Steve enters him, rocks against him slowly and fills him so completely he can’t even think straight. He tilts his hips just so and he sees stars, and it’s only a few more rough drags against his prostate that he’s coming untouched, body writhing and Steve’s name on his lips.

Steve comes shortly after, hips rocking in shallow little thrusts, holding Bucky tight against him, kissing all over his skin and gripping him at the hip while he stills and throbs with the pulses of his orgasm.

They relax together, catching their breath, until Steve tosses the covers off and rolls out of bed to shower. Bucky reluctantly gets up to join him, but catches sight of Steve’s back for the first time. Though most of it is covered in more of the same comic book montage, one tattoo stands out apart from the rest at the small of his back. Bucky reaches out and slides his hand across it, laughing into the crook of Steve’s neck.

“What?” Steve asks.

“Why the hell do you have a Batman tramp stamp?”

Bucky traces his fingers over the familiar black logo, and Steve sighs. “That was the second bet I lost.”

[ ](http://lethalgirlsclub.tumblr.com/post/120214679524)

 

[ ](http://comraderogers.tumblr.com/post/127646553644/i-drew-a-picture-of-bucky-based-on-this-fic-by)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for PTSD flashbacks, graphic depictions of violence, and alcohol use. Please do not use this fic as any type of reference or how-to for getting a tattoo. 
> 
> Jaw-dropping fanart (1) by [lethalgirlsclub](http://lethalgirlsclub.tumblr.com/post/120214679524) and (2) by [comraderogers](http://comraderogers.tumblr.com/post/127646553644/i-drew-a-picture-of-bucky-based-on-this-fic-by). 
> 
> If you dig this fic, you can [reblog the photoset](http://bettydays.tumblr.com/post/120274171747/his-unspeakable-mercies-stucky-tattoo-au-nsfw).
> 
> Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed! You can toss me a follow on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/betty_days) and/or [tumblr](http://www.bettydays.tumblr.com).
> 
> PS The McDonald's anecdote is a true story, but it was actually a Wendy's. And it was my dad. He also got kicked out of RadioShack, but that's a story for another fic.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(art for) His Unspeakable Mercies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4482053) by [featherfluff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherfluff/pseuds/featherfluff)




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